Page 28 - GALIET METAPOIESIS AND TRUTH IV+
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Galiet & Galiet
What mode of reality of beings, of being, of the world then does Heidegger urge and profess?
Matriarchal or patriarchal?
Phusis or nomos?
Heidegger’s views, paradoxically, seem to agree and disagree with Bachofen’s anthropological research. His theory broadly concurs with Bachofen that νομος, the Zeusian-Apollonian sun prevalent in Indo European patriarchy, in affirming its intellectual and moral superiority, demotes Φυσις, the Demeterean-Dionysian moon of pre-Indo-European matriarchy,98 from its authentic meaning. Whereas Φυσις originally symbolizes the (a) chthonic or telluric, (b) moira or natural destiny, (c) mother-matrix and matter, (d) mythos and becoming, (e) existence and accidents, (f) the sensible and sensibility (aisthesis) and (g) natural necessity (ananke), (h) communalism and the indefinite (apeiron), (i) origins (arche) and cyclic time, (j) Lethe-oblivion, (k) night, wine, and all things liquid, νομος epitomizes the (a) celestial or ouranic, (b) convention or state laws, (c) father-patria and form, (d) logos and being (to on, ens), (e) essence and substance (ousia), (f) reason and logic necessity (nous), (g) the absolute and supra-sensible, (h) individualism and the definite (peiron), (i) telos and linear time, (j) aletheia-truth99 (k) day, air and fire.
Φυσις, then, for Bachoven, corresponds to Lethe, mythos, becoming, existence and accidents, the audio-tactile and natural necessity, and νομος to aletheia, logos, being, essence and substance and the visual (eidos). For Heidegger, however, Φυσις parallels not Lethe, but aletheia. Aletheia as the primordial feature, not of nomos’ Idea, but of φυσις; not of thought or understanding, but of authentic being and of dwelling, in half appearance, in half concealment, in the openness of the open 3⁄4 being’s clearing.100 The implications of Heidegger’s reversal are vast, philosophically and anthropologically. Aletheia belongs as much to the realm of becoming as of being. This becoming, never to be linked to Plato’s first two segments of the Divided Line 3⁄4 opinion, belief and appearance 3⁄4 is to be seen as an appearance in the unfolding; that is, in every aspect of being’s unfolding, truth is being revealed as a presence which too conceals.101
98 This matriarchal and patriarchal juxtaposition is discussed by Bachofen.
99 True as Heidegger’s unhiddenness or that which is revealed. Inwood, Michael. A Heidegger Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
100 Heidegger. Vol. 65: Beitrage zur Philosophie. Vom Ereignis. Ed. F.W. von Hermann, 1989. Manuscripts of 1936-8. 329
101 Again, this resonates with Hegel’s metaphor of the seed turned flower turned fruit in the Phenomenology of Mind. Hegel. Phenomenology of Mind. Trans. by J. B. Baillie. Rev. 2d ed. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1949. See Introduction.
Objectivity or subjectivity?
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